1. Among the many paths eighteenth-century readers of the Encyclopédie
might choose to explore for enlightenment, articles dishing up philosophie
in the form of orthodoxy-bashing were certainly favorites. While particular
aim was taken at the Catholic Church, the Encyclopédie
also adopted a critical stance toward the variety of religious sects
that had broken off from the Catholic Church from the time of its establishment.
These sects met with the disdain of all authors of religious articles
in the Encyclopédie, from Mallet to Jaucourt. In Protestant
countries, on the other hand, where the Encyclopédie was
accessible and widely read, articles denouncing religion, especially
those denouncing all forms of Protestantism, rankled those men of letters
who saw no contradiction between enlightenment and revelation. Out of
Switzerland, in the small city of Yverdon-les-Bains, a formal, structured
answer was delivered in the form of a rewritten encyclopedia, the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon, 1770-1780. Thus what might an eighteenth-century reader
of these two encyclopedias learn about heresy from a perusal of some
of their folio and in-quarto tomes spanning the period 1751-1780? This
question brings us squarely into the center of the debate that raged
throughout Europe in Protestant and Catholic quarters alike over the
representation of religion in the 25-folio volume Encyclopédie
of Diderot and D'Alembert (1751-1765). While every stripe of anti-philosophe
had denounced its heretical premises, the consequences of consulting
this work brought the focus in even closer on heresy from the moment
Pope Clement XIII placed the Encyclopédie on the index
in 1759, making access to it difficult in varying degrees in Austria,
Italy, and Spain, with Spain being the least likely country of access
due to the iron-clad efficiency of inquisitorial censorship. Italy's
lack of central leadership had made it possible for two expurgated folio
reprints to surface in Tuscany, where, despite the purported autonomy
of the Tuscan duchy under Leopold III, the Church was simply to close
at hand for the Tuscan publishers Ottaviano Diodati in Lucca and Giuseppe
Aubert in Livorno to produce anything but what we might call cleaned-up
Catholic versions.
However, even less is known about the 58 quarto-volume "Protestant"
response published in the Swiss town of Yverdon-les-Bains, 1770-1780[1].
I have deliberately put Protestant in quotation marks to call attention
to the somewhat problematic nature of this term as used by Robert Darnton
to characterize the work in his Business in the Enlightenment: A
Publishing History of the `Encyclopédie' 1775-1800 . Published
in 1979, Darnton's book reflected the dominant tendency to read the
majority of eighteenth-century literary production through the prism
of France, which often resulted in the drawing of gross comparative
generalizations and very little serious or thorough reading of the other
texts[2].

2. Thanks to the growing interest in the religious aspects of the Enlightenment
to which this volume of essays on heresy provides ample testimony, there
has been a great deal of incentive to read the articles of both encyclopedias
to understand what was truly at stake for a remarkably heterogeneous
group of readers. To be sure, readers delighted in the Encyclopédie's
blasphemies against the Church in articles that had quickly become legendary.
Hidden surprises lurked in articles such as "Aigle," with its mocking
satire of the Holy Spirit, or in "renvois" such as "Capuchon," where
the reader of the respectful article "Cordeliers" was sent for a heavy
dose of philosophie against the waste and corruption of religious
orders that spent the bulk of their time warring over the width of their
hoods[3]. But it turns out that
these oft-quoted examples of Voltaire's agenda to "écraser l'Infâme"
had begun to tire even the sage of Ferney himself; in 1770 Voltaire
wrote to Gabriel Cramer, that, all things considered, the editor of
the Yverdon edition, Fortunato Bartolomeo de Felice and his collaborators,
had succeeded in producing a work that corrected the many errors plaguing
the Encyclopédie: "Pour moi," he concluded drammatically
"j'acheterai l'édition d'Yverdon et non l'autre"[4].
As it turns out, many people did just that[5].
Those seeking more than philosophie were certainly in the market
for more reliable content, especially as the last third of the century
dawned and the appeal of the biting satire and irony of the high French
Enlightenment had begun to wane. From such a perspective, the religious
articles of the Encyclopédie proved superficial, simplistic,
and flawed, despite the fact that "There are...articles on religion
favourable to Catholicism, Protestantism, deism, skepticism, or atheism..."[6].
While we know that the mere existence of such articles was no longer
a compelling enough reason to prefer the Encyclopédie,
it is impossible to chart the extent to which they were problematic
and flawed without performing a reading exercise that is the opposite
of the one Darnton and others implied in their writings on the Encyclopédie
and its competitors. For the articles dealing with heresy, we have instead
read the Encyclopédie articles through those of the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon. By going beyond some of the well-known examples we have
already mentioned, the highly intricate interplay of Catholic religious
orthodoxy, anti-Protestantism, and philosophie that characterizes
the numerous Encyclopédie articles that can be classified
under the rubric of religion, and the encyclopedists who penned them,
comes to light. Thanks to the work of Frank and Serena Kafker, we now
know a great deal about the variety of encyclopedists who contributed
to the Encyclopédie and the degree to which they were
orthodox. However, the group's eclectic nature proved a stumbling block
once knowledge rather than opposition to tradition became the primary
quest of encyclopedia readers.

3.In matters of religion, the encyclopedists who contributed to the
Encyclopédie d'Yverdon were an extremely homogeneous group.
The Encyclopédie d'Yverdon responded to the majority of
religious articles taken from the Encyclopédie with revised
versions; in many cases, they filled in gaps with articles that were
completely new. Thanks to the database index of the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon, it is possible to accurately compute the number of entries
in categories pertaining to religion that the Yverdon encyclopedists
either rewrote, annotated, or provided as new articles[7].
Table I in this article
has been compiled from that database and reflects most of the fields
that are included, with the exception of article length which is indicated
in the database in increments of tenths of a column.
Let us consider the statistics for articles in the three categories
of Ecclesiastical History, Sacred History, and Theology. The Yverdon
encyclopedists designated 733 articles in the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon as pertaining to "Ecclesiastical History;" of those articles,
117 were rewritten and 179 were new, while fourteen were corrected through
the addition of long notes. Of the 422 articles that are unmarked, meaning
that they have been reprised from the Encyclopédie, 95%
extend over less than a half a column, constituting definitions rather
than articles. Under the rubric "Sacred History," of the 592 articles
written, 509 are new, 52 rewritten and merely 31 taken over from the
Encyclopédie. In the category "Theology," of the 620 articles
which make up the total, 76 are new, 176 rewritten, and 10 heavily annotated.
Of the 368 remaining, the vast majority are less than half a column
long, reflecting the kind of content one would find in a dictionary
rather than an encyclopedia, as we have already seen in the case of
"Ecclesiastical History". The electronic database makes it possible
to express the differences between the two encyclopedias statistically,
particularly in the cases where the Yverdon encyclopedists wanted to
distance themselves from the Paris edition by marking articles as new
or rewritten. However, there is still a great deal of work to be done
in comparing the articles in the two enyclopedias that appear to be
the same. Fortunately, the articles regarding heresy that are marked
"R" and "N" in Table I provide ample sources. An overview of the publishing
history and cultural role of the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
are helpful in the presentation of heresy in this Swiss compilation.

4.The Encyclopédie d'Yverdon, published in 58 quarto
volumes between 1770 and 1780 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, by
the Italian Fortunato Bartolomeo de Felice, was conceived by a group
of enlightened Protestant Vaudois pastors and Bernese patricians as
a response to the irreligion and philosophie of Diderot and D'Alembert's
Encyclopédie and as a vehicle for disseminating a workable
model of Lumières in which revelation, scientific discovery,
and innovation could not only co-exist, but work together. Previous
work comparing different categories of these two encyclopedias has yielded
tangible results regarding the significant differences between the two
and the divergent moments of eighteenth-century thought that both represent[8].
However, the articles concerning religion are among the most interesting
to deal with, for they provide an enlightened, informed, intellectual
response to the many points of orthodoxy and ecclesiastical history
that were either overlooked by the authors of the Encyclopédie,
or were given short shrift.
This is not to say that there are no points of convergence-indeed, the
two encyclopedias share a critique of Catholicism, which should be dealt
with in a more exhaustive comparative study on the representation of
religion in the two encyclopedias. Concerning the topic of heresy, convergence
can be found in the view of a number of ancient heretical movements
such as the "Photiniens," the fourth century sect that denied the divinity
of Christ or the "Originistes," who claimed that Christ was only the
son of God by adoption and that even demons would eventually be delivered
from the fires of hell. The articles describing this "ancient" group
of heretical movements are neither new nor rewritten but are, indeed,
reproductions of the articles from the Paris encyclopedia. However,
the bulk of the articles dealing with any form of Protestantism or "proto-protestantism"
has been completely rewritten to reflect the view expressed by Martin
Mulsow.
In delineating the variety of forms that early modern histories of heresy
took on, Mulsow defines one of the possible positions as follows: "A
person x, found traditionally to be a heretic by orthodoxy, is indeed
no heretic, because the condemned doctrine she advocated was in fact
the right doctrine"[9].The rewritten
articles "Hérésie" and "Hérétique" discussed
at the end of this paper demonstrate a very clearly defined position
on heresy and its definition, culminating in an accusation of the philosophes
as the true heretics. By examining a selection of articles that address
the issue of heresy in various ways, the Yverdon encyclopedia's program
vis-à-vis the Encyclopédie will become apparent.

5. Numerous factors contribute to the revision of heresy that unfolds
in the pages of the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon, among which
the autobiographical experiences of managing editor of the enterprise,
F.B. de Felice, should not be discounted.
De Felice certainly had his share of personal experiences with heresy
as a Franciscan in Italy in the 1750s who had been targeted as a Protestant
sympathizer. From the time he had seen the hopes and aspirations of
Antonio Genovesi's enlightened Neapolitan thinkers dashed following
the death of Benedict XIV and the election of Clement XIII as pope,
he was looking for any available means to leave Italy and live his life
independently of the Catholic Church. He had been schooled in Brescia
during the 1730s, when Protestant texts circulated freely in this small,
intellectually curious northern Italian town, and religious debate was
open[10]. He then went to Rome,
where he took his orders, setting out a few years later for Naples to
occupy a chair of experimental physics at Antonio Genovesi's behest.
He first became familiar with Switzerland when he traveled there with
the Countess Panzuti, whom he had helped escape from the convent she
had been locked away in by her husband following a marital dispute.
Destitute after several weeks of travel through the "pays hérétique"
including Switzerland, De Felice returned to Italy with the Countess,
where they were immediately seized. Countess Panzutti was again sequestered,
but De Felice was merely given a light penance by the ecclesiastical
authorities and reprimanded "over a cup of hot chocolate," as Gorani's
chronicle of De Felice's life tells it, for having traveled among the
Protestant heretics[11]. From
that point on he was branded as a heretic in Italy and sought permanent
exile status in Switzerland. Thanks to contacts between himself, Giambattista
Morgagni in Padua and Albrecht von Haller in Berne, he escaped from
Italy in 1757, shortly after the repressive pope Clement XIII had replaced
Benedict XIV.

6. Once in Switzerland, De Felice became an outspoken critic of Catholicism,
penning several of the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon articles
on Catholicism himself or supplying his collaborator, the pastor Gabriel
Mingard, with the material. However, De Felice had already begun honing
his anti-Catholic rhetorical skills before leaving Italy. In 1756 an
eight-volume translation of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales with
copious notes and comentary was published in Venice bearing his signature.
The work was apparently commissioned by the Bernese patrician, Vincenz
Bernard von Tscharner, who with Albrecht von Haller, would subsequently
welcome him to Berne. Because of the vociferous call for reform in this
work, De Felice was often confused with Carlo Antonio Pilati, another
expatriot Italian residing in Switzerland, who had written a three-volume
work on reforming the Catholic Church[12].
Once De Felice fled Italy for Switzerland under a pseudonym, his reputation
as a heretic in his native country was sealed. None of his former colleagues
or collaborators dared correspond with him for fear of their own lives,
since they had been warned not to answer any of his letters or to collaborate
with him in any way. This was unfortunate, as De Felice had hoped to
recruit for his encyclopedia the man he considered the most intelligent
in all of in Italy, the Neapolitan Freemason, Raimondo de Sangre, the
Prince of San Severo, with whom, as he wrote in his correspondence,
he would spend hours critiquing the Catholic Church. Once he became
engaged in Swiss Lumières in a significant way, and the
commercial successes of his encyclopedia rivaled those of Diderot and
D'Alembert's Encyclopédie, he was branded by Voltaire
as a "polisson, plus imposteur encore qu'apostat, qui demeure dans un
cloaque du Pays de Vaud"[13].
Despite such negative assessments of its founding author's character,
the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon took the world of eighteenth-century
letters by surprise. As much as the philosophes critiqued its humble
origins, published far from the likes of Paris in the relatively insignificant
Swiss town of Yverdon-les-Bains, the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
nonetheless became one of the jewels in the crown of French-language
publications produced in Romandie in the second half of the eighteenth
century that was successfully marketed and sold at the Leipzig book
fair twice a year[14].

Book fair catalogue statistics clearly indicate a sudden and almost
thorough shift in the production of French-language books produced outside
of France from Holland to Switzerland in the second half of the eighteenth
century. De Felice's preface to the Yverdon encyclopedia explains why
Yverdon-les-Bains, a small town in the Pays de Vaud under Bernese rule,
was the ideal place to publish an encyclopedia. By extension, it also
explains why the publishing houses in Neuchâtel and Lausanne also
did a thriving business 1765-1789 in the wake of greater censorship
restrictions in France:

7. As far as De Felice was concerned, the circumstances for publishing
an encyclopedia that could openly critique Catholicism were far better
in Switzerland than they were in Italy or in France at the time that
the Encyclopédie was published. In comparison to the political
reality of Italy during the last few years of his life there, the Canton
of Bern seemed a haven of open expression, at least for the issues that
were the most important to him-the exposure of the Catholic Church and
exposure of the fallacy of philosophie which from the Swiss perspective,
provided no constructive platform for the progress of the human spirit.
De Felice's introduction can be read as a religious and political justification
for philosophie as a strategy of necessity, which the French
were forced into by a corrupt political and religious structure. De
Felice's preface also provides an overview of the criteria that he and
his collaborators applied in their adaptation of the Encyclopédie.
Recognizing the French encyclopedia as the blueprint for his own encyclopedic
enterprise, De Felice explained that he had tried to bring more unity
to articles belonging to the same branch of learning so that the reader
might better understand the way the articles in a given area were linked
to each other as part of a "système complet". Furthermore, he
stated that they had filled in the numerous gaps in the French work
where essential articles were missing, eliminating those that were no
longer useful, or in the opinion of the Yverdon encyclopedists, no longer
of interest to "l'Europe éclairée".
Articles that were out of date or poorly written from the start were
cast anew as well. Additionally, and most pertinent for the topic of
this paper, entire disciplines were completely rewritten, including
theology and church history as we have seen from the statistical overview
outlined above. Early testimony from Albrecht von Haller bears witness
to the changes that the Yverdon encyclopedists adopted. Though he had
harbored reservations about the enterprise in its early stages, Haller
wrote in favor of the enterprise to Charles Bonnet after reading the
first few volumes in 1770: "L"originalité de l'entreprise Felice,
comparée à l'entreprise parisienne, ne saurait, je crois,
être contestée... Que l'esprit en soit autre, particulièrement
en ce qui touche la philosophie et la religion, nous nous en persuaderons
tantôt..." (Ms. Bonnet, 50, fol. 60. Dec. 6, 1770, Bibliothèque
Publique et universitaire, Genève).

8. In 1772 Charles Bonnet read 25 articles taken from the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon which he compared to articles by the same title in the
Encyclopédie. Almost all of the articles for which he
penned commentaries in his Notice Raisonnée comparing
the two works dealt with religion and morality. Bonnet also critiqued
numerous articles from the Paris encyclopedia and Formey's Dictionnaire
portatif in the same Notice. Following Bonnet's lead, we
have a good idea of how the contemporary Swiss "homme de lettres" viewed
these works in a comparative light. On November 13, 1772, he wrote to
Haller about his comparative exercise: "If I were to judge these articles
by their approach to the task at hand, I would prefer the Yverdon encyclopedia
to that of Paris"[15]. Bonnet
complimented, in particular, the articles written by Gabriel Mingard,
the pastor in Lausanne who was De Felice's best and closest collaborator.
He was often assigned theological articles and those dealing with rational
philosophy which Bonnet found particularly well done.
Bonnet was especially complimentary about the "new" article "Certitude"
which had been completely reworked. Bonnet found it to be "good protection
against Pyrrhonisme." Mingard's articles deserve close attention because
they point to a controversy concerning orthodoxy in the Pays de Vaud,
which was under Bernese rule and whose censors therefore read the Yverdon
encyclopedia for approval. In volume X of the Plates, the last volume
of the Encyclopedie d'Yverdon to be published before the six
volumes of the Supplément were produced, Felice explained
why Mingard signed his articles with two different sets of initials-either
GM or MDB. Mingard had been accused of writing articles that were unorthodox,
inviting close scrutiny of all articles signed GM. For this reason,
he began to sign articles of a potentially controversial nature MDB.
Since no one was looking for unorthodox writing in the articles signed
MDB, De Felice claimed that no further complaints were lodged. Table
I shows articles signed both ways by Mingard. Further research
is needed to determine why the articles signed MDB were more problematic
than the ones signed GM. In theological matters, De Felice was also
helped by one of Mingard's colleagues, Alexandre-César Chavannes,
who signed CC and wrote on the history of religions; Elie Bertrand (BC)
a Vaudois pastor who carried on an intensive correspondence with Voltaire,
also wrote about theology. The list of Encycopédie d'Yverdon
articles (Table I)
pertinent to heresy that accompanies this paper indicates articles that
were either anonymous, signed by De Felice, Mingard (with both sets
of initials), Chavannes, or Bertrand.

9. The most difficult part of working with a corpus as large as the
Encyclopédie d'Yverdon is establishing a core group of
articles to begin the initial study. The attached table provides a representative
sampling for heresy, which is by no means exhaustive, as we have already
indicated in our brief statistical overview of articles addressing religious
topics. In order to do more thorough justice to the topic, the entire
corpus of articles signed by each of the four authors on theological
topics should be dealt with separately.
For example, Mingard's articles (signed both GM and MDB) number over
1371. Nonetheless, our work in this area allows us to establish the
following general differences about the two encyclopedias that serve
to provide a working context for the topic of heresy:
I. The Encyclopédie d'Yverdon refuses and refutes all
forms of "philosophical pride". The group of articles "Pyrrhonisme,
Conjecture, (not signed) and the articles "Comment" and "Evènement"
signed by Mingard consistently attack atheism, materialism, and spinozasime,
in particular D'Holbach's Système de la Nature. This refutation
is found in Mingard's article "Nature," in which he cites the mistake
of those who think, like Spinoza did, that the universe "était
la cause de lui-meme".
II. The Encyclopédie d'Yverdon repeatedly affirms in a
variety of articles the compatibility of revealed religion and natural
religion. Mingard's article "Déiste" provides the best
example, while De Felice peppers throughout his own articles entire
passages of Rousseau's Profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard[16].
III. The Yverdon encyclopedists agree, however, with the philosophes
that there is nothing worse than religious fanaticism, and no one is
spared. Catholics are taken to task for this in the articles "Jesuites"
an unsigned, rewritten, fifty-one column article, and "Missionaire",
also rewritten and signed by De Felice himself. However, the Yverdon
encyclopedists consistently correct attributions of fanaticism to Protestant
and proto-Protestant movements made in the Paris encyclopedia. This
point will be addressed in detail in the discussion on the articles
"Albigeois, Hussites, and Luther, Martin" in this paper.
IV. Strong attack against Catholicism, mainly coming from De Felice
and Mingard. For example, there is total agreement between Mingard's
rewritten diatribe against celibacy in the Yverdon encyclopedia and
the article "Célibat" in the Paris encyclopedia.
V. Critical of the persecution of heretics, even when the persecution
was imposed by the Calvinists. For example, Elie Bertrand's articles
on Calvinism and Jean Calvin criticize the "supplice de Servet" in which
Jean Calvin put the Spaniard Michel Servet to death for his interpretation
of Calvin's teachings, futhermore, Bertrand was bothered by the Calvinists'
strict adherence to scripture, claiming in his articles that Calvin
"n'est point du tout un docteur infaillible".
VI. By extension, the Yverdon encyclopedia is hostile to all forms of
theological dogmatism. This comes through the most in Mingard's articles
and in the articles "Hérésie" and "Hérétique"
which are discussed further at the end of the article.

10. The list of articles related to heresy on Table
I is by no means exhaustive but it is thorough enough for the
purposes of this article. While this table of articles could be analyzed
in a number of ways, we will limit our comments to those articles relating
to Protestant movements or sects that cleared the way for the Protestantism
that was practiced by the Yverdon encyclopedists. It would even be fair
to take this one step further and to say that the autobiographical element
is key, particularly in the case of F.D. De Felice.
It is opportune to remember that De Felice grew up and was ordained
in a Rome whose Inquisition had been "reconstituted in 1542 to combat
the menace of Protestantism in the Italian peninsula, whereas the Spanish
Inquisition had been created more than half a century earlier to deal
with massive numbers of converted Jews. The nature of what was considered
"heresy" in each system reflects these original concerns"[17].
Although almost two hundred years separated the reconstitution of the
Roman Inquisition to stamp out Protestant heresy and De Felice's decision
to leave Italy, it is easy to see the extent to which Felice identified
with the Protestant mission to rectify the errors of the Catholic Church
and to set a new course that was determined by both a spiritual and
intellectual engagement with Scripture. Nowhere is this more clearly
demonstrated that in the three articles "Albigeois"[18],
"Hussites," and "Luther, Martin."
Although only the article "Hussites" is signed by De Felice, the other
two are unsigned but bear his style and passion. These three articles
provide an example of the kind of rehabilitation of three heretics that
follow Mulsow's model which we have mentioned earlier. In contrast with
the Encyclopédie articles of the same title, the intent
of the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon articles "Albigeois," "Hussites,"
and "Luther, Martin" is to expunge the notion of heresy attributed to
the beliefs of the Albigeois, Hussites, and Lutherans by the Encyclopédie
and instead to present them as proponents of the right doctrine. The
opening of the article "Hussites" in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
is indicative: "Secte de chretiens, ainsi nommés de Jean Hus,
recteur de l'Université de Prague, né dans un bourg de
la Bohème de parens obscurs, le 6 Juillet en 1373. Fameux par
ses prédications en langue vulgaire, il adore Wiclef et le déclare
un saint dans ses sermons", (EY XXIII, 588).

11. In a few brief sentences, De Felice paints a picture of heroic
reform. He goes on to tell how Hus was called to Rome and later excommunicated,
but returnsed to his native Prague where he continued preaching to write
his works Unité de l'Eglise and Six erreurs. De Felice describes
how Hus was burned for his beliefs and how his horrible death only served
to further ignite passion for him and his beliefs in his native Prague.
Like Peter Waldo, founder of the Albigeois whom we will turn to next,
Hus gave to the poor and ministered to them, renouncing all riches.
He is also credited with having returned to scriptural sources to extract
truths that had been buried and forgotten by the Catholic clergy and
replaced instead with error. As can be seen in the long quote below,
De Felice wants his readers to understand the man behind the movement
and to see him as the well-loved and well-respected member of his community
that he was. In this vein, much is made of the recognition Hus received
from his country and the university, which not only remained proud,
but also accorded him an éloge which appears on the front
of a Catholic church in Prague:

12. De Felice attacks the fanaticism of the Catholic Church, the "rage
romaine" that has persecuted Jean Hus and tried to block his teachings.
More importantly though, De Felice describes the ecclesiastical institutions
in Prague, the Church and the University, as being completely behind
Jean Hus and bucking the authority of Rome. Authority resides with truth
and that truth is to be found in scripture, not in the structure of
the church or in the constructed infallibility of one man. The four
authors of religious articles in the Yverdon encyclopedia share this
point of view, which can be best summed up in Elie Bertrand's assessment
of Jean Calvin as not being an infallible doctor. As he explains it,
the Calvinists: " ... n'admettent aucun article de la doctrine
de Calvin sur son autorité seule, mais en tant qu'ils le trouvent
révélé & établi dans l'Ecriture-Sainte.
Calvin est pour eux un docteur, respectable sans doute, par ses vertus,
son savoir & ses travaux ; mais point du tout un docteur infaillible,
ni un maître qu'ils suivent sans examen". ( " Calvinisme
" EY, v. VII, p. 128).
The article "Hussite" as it appears in the Encyclopédie
serves up an entirely different interpretation of Jean Hus, the Hussites,
and their aftermath. Less than one quarter the length of the Yverdon
article, Jaucourt, the author, has not focused at all on Jean Hus, but
rather on the religious wars that shook Bohemia in the wake of his death
and the ferocity of his followers and their leaders, in particular Jean
Ziska: "Les Hussites, vengeurs de Jean Hus étoient au nombre
de quarante mille: c'étoient des animaux sauvages, que la sevérité
du concile avoit déchaînés; les prêtres qu'ils
recontroient payoient de leur sang la cruauté des pères
de Constance; Jean, surnommé Ziska, qui veut dire borgne, chef
barbare de ces barbares, battit Sigismond plus d'une fois", (Encyclopédie,
v. VIII, p.357).
Jaucourt's sarcasm is palpable, as is his scorn for anyone who would
bring religious zeal to such a pitch. While De Felice emphasized the
erudition and reason that guided Hus and his followers, Jaucourt focuses
on Ziska, reminding us that the name means "borgne," or one-eyed (he
had lost one of his eyes in battle), but the figurative meaning of dishonest
and ill-reputed was lost on no one. Jaucourt also emphasizes the grotesque
and the bizarre, ending his account with the image of Ziska's skin stretched
over a drum that was used to lead the Hussites in battle after his death.
Such a portrayal corresponds with the intent of the philosophe camp
to point out the monsterous, superstitious and fanatical repercussions
of all religions.

13. The article "Albigeois" offers a similar comparative scenario.
Though unsigned in the Yverdon edition, as we have already mentioned,
De Felice probably wrote the article. As was the case for "Hussite,"
"Albigeois" has been greatly expanded with respect to the Encyclopédie
article written by Mallet, a Catholic priest, as is evident from the
first few lines when he describes the Albigeois:

Mallet's style is noteworthy, as it constitutes a conflation of what
we might call "philosophie catholique". Mallet employs the sarcastic,
mocking tone used by the philosophes against the "Infâme," but
his position purportedly represents that of the Catholic Church. This
binary "us, Catholic"/"them, heretics" opposition holds true throughout
the entire article. Mallet plants the seed in the mind of the reader
of a marauding band of various heretics who have come together to disrupt
the institutional aspects of the Catholic Church, i.e., the receiving
of the sacraments, the hierarchical order, and the discipline of the
Church. They are labeled as heretics from the first sentence of the
article and are held in full contempt by Mallet for their "erreurs"
and for having "infected" the provinces around Albi with their beliefs,
which are disparagingly called opinions. Instead, the Yverdon version
of the same article, asserts a different binary opposition "us, Protestants
and therefore heretics in the eyes of the Catholics" and "them, Catholics":

14. The care taken in philological precision to accurately describe
who they are and how they have evolved signals the reader to the respect
accorded to this group by the author. The subtext of Protestant authority
in sources and matters of erudition underlies this thorough delineation
of the group's origins, which explains how they are related to the Waldensiens.
The precision of Protestant erudition is at the heart of this article
and is part of each of the heresies that are discussed in the Encyclopedie
d'Yverdon. In the article "Albigeois" errors of Catholic erudition,
in this case Bossuet, are thoroughly indicated. Speaking of the origins
of this group the author of the article cites the linguistic confusion
among the words " Wald ", " Vaudois ", and the city " Walden " : "C'est
ce qui a fait dire a plusieurs Auteurs catholiques, entr'autres M. Bossuet,
que les Vaudois dont il s'agit, étoient d'une origine beaucoup
plus ancienne que le XIIe siècle". The correction comes from
a Protestant, of course, Basnage de Beauval's multi-volume Histoire
Ecclesiastique: "Mais M. Basnage Hist. Eccles. XXIV. 10 a bien prouve
que les Vaudois du Piemont sont beaucoup plus anciens & n'ont rien de
commun, quant a l'origine, avec ceux-ci", (Ibid., p. 62). Having
introduced the authority of this Protestant source, Basnage, he gives
us the information, which makes the Encyclopédie article look
ridiculous. Here we are give the real story of Waldus of Lyon, a rich
merchant who decided to give all of his goods to the poor following
the sudden death of one of the men in his town. He then took up a life
of study and piety: "Le peuple accourant auprès de lui en foule,
il leur traduisoit le Nouveau Testament en langue vulgaire, & leur en
donnoit une explication plus claire & plus judicieuse que celle que
les Docteurs de ce tems-la leur proposoient en public. Il ne negligeoit
pas, lorsque l'occasion s'en presentoit, de relever les abus qui s'étoient
introduits dans la doctrine & dans le culte, & sur-tout par raport à
l'autorité du Clergé" ( Ibid., p. 62).
Some 300 years prior to Luther, Waldus made the Bible known to the people
in the Vulgate they spoke, bringing to him in droves those who sought
a clearer, more sensible explaination for their religion than the "Docteurs"
had been able to offer.

15. Two points are worth mentioning here that run throughout the articles
on heretics such as the "Albigeois," who are also identified with the
Waldensiens, and "Hussites" and later Luther, who were really "following
the right doctrine," to use Muslow's formulation. First, they share
the same critique of the Catholic Church, its meaningless and superstitious
rituals, the sacraments, especially confession and communion with its
inherent dogma of transubstantiation. Since their beliefs are described
using the adjective Protestant, the Yverdon encyclopedists are making
a case for them to be viewed as proto-Protestants[19]:

16. A quick glance at the long article on Martin Luther at the point
where his translation of the Bible is described underscores how the
act of making the word of God known to the public constitutes the single
most important clevage between Catholocism and the reform of what the
Yverdon encyclopedists refer to as "notre réligion" in the passage
below:

The importance of the translation of the Bible paradoxically applies
to an argument that is both populist and elitist. It is obviously populous
in its outreach to the common man and in the identification of its leaders,
i.e. Waldo, Hus, and Luther as identifying with the work of the New
Testament as that of the word of God made accessible through Jesus who
was described, in part, as their peer, who had felt temptation and could
understand sin. However, the translation of the Bible is also elitist
in its relation to Renaissance erudition and man's faculties of reason,
a most important tenet in the position of the Yverdon encylopedists.
The article on Martin Luther in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
spends a great deal of time explaining how the erudition and reform
went hand in hand:

17. Martin Luther is characterized as a man of scientific inquiry in
his pursuit of the truth contained in scriptures which reason dictated
that he tackle through application of the interpretive methods developed
to extract the meaning of the Greek and Latin texts that had come to
light during the Renaissance. Thus through reason, a human faculty,
revelation is made known and is understandable. Martin Luther fulfills
the promise of Hus, Waldo, and Wyclif, whose efforts to make the Bible
available in the vernacular are now crowned by the expertise of a Renaissance
theologian whose erudition has made it possible to fully access the
word of God. Renaissance, erudition, reason, "bel esprit," and even
wit (plaisanterie) have been used to beat back the ignorance of the
monks and priests who had persisted in promoting error that could no
longer survive in the face of scientific truth. Erudition and reform
go hand in hand:

18. The Yverdon encyclopedists see their work as the continuation of
Martin Luther's erudite reform. During the eighteenth century when the
philosophes were using reason and erudition to tear down religion, Bertrand,
Chavannes, De Felice, and Mingard fight back with an entire encyclopedia
whose working premise is the compatibility of reason and religion. The
excerpts taken from the 16-page, rewritten Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
article on Martin Luther promote the reformer as the embodiment of the
"right doctrine" whose example, it is implied, continues to provide
guidance. Instead, the brief Encyclopédie article "Luthéranisme"
contains a portrait of the reformer that condemns him as the initiator
of a new heresy in the first paragraph:

The article ends with the trivialization of Luther's ideas, and the
damning evidence of the confusion and discord created by Luther in the
spawning of thirty-nine different sects, all listed for effect: "Il
est sorti du luthéranisme trente-neuf sectes toutes différentes;
savoi r....".Table I lists several
articles that are either rewritten or new that serve to flesh out the
position of the Yverdon encyclopedists that the medieval heresies we
have been examining were instead the expressions of early Protestantism
that the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon fully embraced. Articles
such as "Cathares" or "Adamites ou Adamiens", both rewritten by Chavannes,
present ideas that were close to those of the Albigeois, the Waldensiens,
and the Hussites, but condemnable, along with the new article on Savonarola,
whose assignment to the category "Fanatisme" leaves no doubt as to how
his ideas of religious purity were seen. They see the thread of continuity
running from the Albigenses, Waldensians, and Hussites through Luther
and indeed, both the Waldensians and the Hussites jumped immediately
on the reformed bandwagon once exposed to the teachings of Luther[20].

19 The final paragraphs of the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
article "Albigeois" describes this genealogy explicitly:

At the beginning of the second volume the conclusion to the article
"Albigeois" can be read as a program statement for the articles on religion
in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon, and as we have seen throughout
this paper in our consideration of the articles Hussites and Martin
Luther. However, the story is far from complete if we fail to press
beyond Luther and examine at least a sampling of articles dealing with
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century figures, not to mention the role
they have assigned themselves as keepers first of the "right doctrine"
and second of the tradition of Protestant erudition that Luther had
established during the Renaissance.
Indeed, one might read the entire Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
as a monument to Protestant erudition, inclusive of Switzerland, to
be sure, but the other two bastions of Protestant scholarship, namely,
Holland and the German centers of Protestant erudition, i.e., Halle,
Leipzig, Berlin, and Potsdam. Thus, the complementary set of articles
we are about to examine focuses on seventeenth-century figures whose
ideas and teachings set the stage for the controversy about heresy in
the two encyclopedias; more importantly, they lay bare the opposing
religious premises upon which each encyclopedia had built its intellectual
edifice.
The most striking contrast among seventeenth-century scholars to be
found in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon pits the likes of
Pierre Bayle against the brothers Jacques Basnage and Henri Basnage
de Beauval. The eighteenth-century battle over religions that plays
itself out in the pages of the two encyclopedias finds a precedent in
the comparison of their sources and the goals of their writings. New
articles on all three appear in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon,
and source texts from all three are cited in other articles, for example,
Bayle is quoted in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon article
"Hérésie" while Jacques Basnage's Histoire Ecclesiastique
is cited in the article "Albigeios" as the authority who was used to
correct the erroneous scholarship of Catholic Church historians among
whom Bossuet is mentioned.

20. The charges levied against Pierre Bayle are numerous and presented
in a form that is reminiscent of a tirade. Despite their number, however,
these charges all result in the same accusation - that of having willfully
spread heresy through his writing on religion, in contrast with Voltaire's
glowing assessment of Bayle's method and erudition. The author of this
article attempts to tear down Bayle through a series of direct attacks
that leave no stone unturned in their vehemence. However, the most serious
of all his "crimes" is that of having opened the door to the philosophes
through a method of argumentation that respects no rules, not the least
of which is that of seeking the truth:

Author of the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, one of the
models for the Encyclopédie, Bayle is cited for his method
of heaping one teaching on top of the other without imposing a teaching
of "truth" or worse perhaps even seeing one. Bayle is characterized
as the enemy of all religions:

21. This enemy of religion is marked as the precurser to the philosophes
both in his procedures and in the goal of his erudition, which placed
reason and religion in a state of perpetual contradiction, resulting
in their reciprocal destruction. Adopted by the philosophes as a precursor,
the author of this article takes the opportunity to attack philosophie
through Bayle is taken, as well as the occasion to redress the wrongs
against the term philosopher:

Bayle is painted with the brush of the worst of the heretics from
the past (manichéisme, pyrrhonisme) to the present
(déisme, athéisme). The articles about the
Basnage brothers are not particularly remarkable in and of themselves,
but when seen in contrast with the article on Bayle, the plan of the
Yverdon encyclopedists is revealed yet again. Their works are cited
as being reliable and solid, if not belonging to the top tier of scholarly
writing, mainly for reasons of style:

The Yverdon encyclopedists also use this article on Basnage to point
out the frivoloties of "La République des Lettres" that blocks
the circulation of the truth for reasons of personal gain and pettiness:

22. Further research continues to turn up figures who could be added
to this picture of the seventeenth century, such as the Dutch Arminian
theologian Philippe de Limborch whose work on the Inquisition is cited
in the article "Hussites," or another famous Arminian, the jurist Hugo
Grotius, whose work was greatly admired by the Yverdon encyclopedists;
both Limborch and Grotius have new articles in the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon as can be seen by consulting Table
I.
Our assessment of the eighteenth-century representation and discussion
of heresy in the two encyclopedias brings us to the articles "Hérésiarque,"
"Hérésie," and "Hérétique," in the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon, none of which is signed. The article "Hérésiarque,"
defines the heresiarque as the author of a particular heresy, or the
head of a heretical sect, followed by a cross-reference to the article
"Hérétique." The heretics listed are Cerinthe, Ebion,
Basilides, Valentin, Marcion, Montan, Manes, Arius, Macedonius, Sabelius,
Pélage, Nestorius, Eatyches, Socin, etc, but a comparison with
the article in the Encyclopédie reveals an important difference.
To the list of heretics mentioned in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
article, seven have been added. Their names appear in italics that we
have added to the following citation:

In the Yverdon encyclopedia, Berenger, Wyclif, Jean Hus, Jérome
de Prague, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Servet have been removed from
the ranks of the heretics. Although we have not dwelt on these figures
in this article, all of them or their followers have either new or rewritten
articles in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon as can be seen
by consulting Table I[21].
The articles "Hérésie" and "Hérétique need
to be read together as one, since they present what is probably a composite
picture of this encyclopediass position on heresy. Both encyclopedias
defind heresy as having changed in meaning from a positive term to a
negative one. The Yverdon encyclopedists describe the heretic as a reasonalbe
skeptic, akin to Descartes in his consideration and weighing of all
assertions before commiting to one. The first paragraph of the article
"Hérésie", defines the term after telling the reader that
the word derives from the Greek word for "choix":

23. Instead, the article claims, theologians have preferred to limit
the meaning of heretic to those who express ideas relative to objects
of faith and religion in a way that does not conform to the established
and dominant system. It is from this perspective, then, that they are
called upon to consider the term heresy.
The article calls for setting the boundaries of heresy to include 1)
only that which opposes scripture and 2) cases where Scripture has expressed
itself on the subject in question in such a way that there is no room
for doubt or opposition. However, the article goes on to say that theologians
have never tried to establish boundaries for a definition of heresy,
preferring to extend them, or worse, even destroy them in order to be
the masters of hatefully qualifying as heretics anyone who had somehow
become the object of their hate whom they wanted to turn into the object
of their resentment.
The author attributes all of the problems of the Church to attempts
to stamp out heresy. This position is not too far from that of Jaucourt's
in the articles on heresy written for the Encyclopédie
with the difference, of course, that he is only concerned with Catholic
orthodoxy and thus blind to the kind of inquisitorial authority that
John Calvin had used to put Michel Servet to death. Jaucourt's article
is specifically geared to the French monarchy and the religions of war
that tore France apart in the sixteenth century. He also makes clear
that he is not providing an apology for heresy:

24. Jaucourt's narrow view of heresy and his simplistic call at the
end of the article for peace, mildness, and tolerance with no real proposal
of how to institute them, nor any real analysis of how, among contemporaries,
heretics are formed arise and how they should be treated constitutes
an ideal example of what the Yverdon encyclopedists saw as empty philosophie
that provided no real solutions. The Encyclopédie d'Yverdon
instead asks the reader to consider the position of the purported heretic
and the origin of his ideas. The author even constructs what we might
call the mother's milk defense of the heretic in an appeal to the reasonable
person to see the heretic as a human being:

The author continues by describing the mechanism by which heresy is
persecuted, unpacking step by step procedures that might be adopted
for dealing with heretics. Once the heretic has been identified for
punishment, the author tells us that we enter a labyrinth without exit.
Once we begin to persecute and decry those who have been judged to be
infected with heresy, we embitter them and alienate them. Since they
are men, he says, they are subject to the same passions as their adversaries.
They react to accusations of heresy and it is only a short distance
from the first sparks to a full blown blaze.
The author then attempts to establish some order in the thought process
that should prevail in such situations. A church has declared itself
orthodox and even universal, which means that it believes that all of
its dogma, morals, and practices conform the best to Holy Scripture.
This church has the right to insist on being refered to as orthodox
and universal by those who want to belong to its spiritual body and
take advantage of the temporal and spiritual gains that such membership
may confer. But if the rights of such a church extend that far, should
it go farther and have the legal power over any other civil or religious
institution that has declared itself equally orthodox and universal.

25. The author compares this situation to two political bodies, empires
or kingdoms that neither hate nor harass each other solely because they
have different laws and customs and have different names. Here he critiques
human nature's tendency to hate those who do not share the same ideas,
blaming the origin of national pride on this flaw of human nature. This
pride and its effects are related to something he calls ecclesiastecal
pride, which he defines as the father of all heresy. He tells us that
even a mediocre effort of reason is enough to convince us 1) that everyone
has an inalienable right to think freely, and 2) that a society that
has produced a moral individual has the right to impose conformity to
its ideals in the way ideas are expressed because in return, the individual
reaps the advantages of belonging to its body. This is essential for
good order and peace. The sovereign has the right to impose his authority
in this matter, but not to institutionalize dogma or worship. It is
possible that more than one church has been given the right to exist
within the borders of a particular state or ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
If this is the case, each church has the right to exist.
But if we still must identify heretics, then let us talk about the individual
who grew up as part of a particular church, but changes ideas and sentiments.
He adopts other doctrines or invents them. If he keeps them to himself,
it is a non-event, since he is merely exercising his essential freedom
of thought. If he speaks of these things discretely, with friends and
family, and those he has in confidence, there is no cause to jump to
the rigors of the inquisition and cause a scandal, which is always the
biggest of all evils. If he begins to proselytize, then public peace
is threatened and those who must maintain public order have the right
to exercise it, but they should always follow the law of prudence. One
should remind such an individual of his position and show him that he
does not have the right to act in this manner, and require him to declare
his intentions. If he persists, then the punishment can be meted out.
Reminiscent of Rousseau's Social Contract, heresy is viewed as
a local phenomenon to be dealt with, one that will rarely be punished
if all routes of moderation and gentleness are followed. It is at this
point, the author states, that the limits of tolerance are touched.
Here the author attacks Voltaire and the philosophes criticizing
them for recommending tolerence, but accusing them for not understanding
it, and for substituting it with reckless license and complete impunity,
resulting in disorder. The author warns against societies where anyone
can attack what the society respects the most.

26. The problem of societies and men who are imbued with the opinion
that there are neither rules nor limits and that one obeys only by force,
awaiting the most favorable occasions to oveturn all barriers and allow
themselves all excess, is a perspective that in the view of the Yverdon
encyclopedist posed a threat. Indeed, the author claims, the philosophes
have passed from one extreme to the other, the new extreme being the
irreligion of philosophie. At one time, he tells us, superstition created
heretics, sharpened knives, and lit inquisitorial fires; today irreligion
threatens humanity with the same dangers by whitewashing what is the
blackest and most atrocious, and by conceiving of the human race as
having "one single head so that it might be chopped off in a single
blow."
This imputation against the philosophes as the new heretics whose
ideas, methods, and practices are just as dangerous as those of Catholic
orthodoxy in their establishment of an new orthodoxy philosophique constitutes
a stunning rejoinder both to Jaucourt's entire article on heresy and
his empty plea for toleration as well as to Voltaire who is again criticized
for his pronouncements on rights without defining what they are.
It is ultimately this position against the philosophes that makes the
Encyclopédie d'Yverdon its own machine de guerre,
but one that is pointed against what has become the orthodoxy of philosophie,
a claim not at all unlike the one levied against the French Enlightenment
by Adorno and Horkheimer after World War II: the Enlightenment had failed
to be self-critical[22].
We might ask ourselves though what doctrine or philosophy undergirded
Yverdon encyclopedists position beyond their apology for enlightened
Protestantism and what they were ultimately proposing to a late-eighteenth
century European audience. The answer is to be found in the teachings
of Christian Wolff (1679-1754) who had argued for the "middle ground
between the pure truths of revelation and those of reason, where reason
can be used in support of revelation"[23].
Fredrick the Great had been responsible for calling Wolff to Halle to
establish religious tolerance throughout Prussia despite problems with
the Pietists who had kept enlightened thinkers from the professoriate.
Among the contributers to the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon who
wrote anonymously from Potsdam was Jean Henri Samuel Formey, a transplanted
Huguenot pastor who was the perpetual secretary to Fredrick the Great's
Academy of Sciences and a strong proponent of Wolff. He penned many
of the unsigned articles pertaining to religion and was a proclaimed
Wolfien[23]. Wolff's insistence
on the tenets of reason and revelation provided guidance to the Yverdon
encyclopedists in matters of religion and ecclesiastical history that
explain their position on Hus, Luther, Waldo and the rest whose principal
flaw in the eyes of orthodoxy was the application of reason to matters
of religion. Although more work is needed to further uncover the presence
of Wolff and his ideas in the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon,
the Yverdon encyclopedists' position on heresy constitutes a solid foundation
for future research. Moreover, this comparative sampling of articles
provides us with concrete examples of the differences between the Encyclopédie
and the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon that make it possible to
articulate the views of both sets of encyclopedists in ways that bring
us closer to a true understanding of different views of enlightenment
over a highly contested issue.

[*] A version of this paper is being
published in the collection Histories of Heresy, ed. John Christian
Laursen, New York, Palgrave, 2002.

[2] This is not to be read as a critique
of Darnton, but instead as recognition of the state of scholarship on
"other" faces of the Enlightenment even as late as the end of the 1970s.
On the contrary, Darnton's own bestseller on the eighteenth-century publishing
trade prepared the terrain for in-depth work on the many encyclopedias
he discusses, piquing scholarly interest to go beyond the commercial data
and market analysis to the content of the articles themselves to determine
the intellectual positions that are truly at the basis of the differences
separating all of these compilations and in our particular situation,
those separating the Encyclopédie from the Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon.

[5] See Darnton cit., p. 20: "...the
Encyclopédie d'Yverdon had a good reputation in the eighteenth-century,
and not only in pietistic corners of Germany and Holland."

[6] Frank A. Kafker and Serena L.
Kafker, The Encyclopedists as individuals: a biographical dictionary
of the authors of the `Encyclopédie', Studies on Voltaire
and the Eighteenth Century, 287, p. xi, Oxford, 1988.

[7] The cd-rom edition of this database
will be available next year from the Centre International d'Etude du
XVVIIIe Siècle, Ferney-Voltaire.

[9] Martin Muslow, "The Trinity as
Heresy," in Histories of Heresy in Early Modern Europe, ed. John
Christian Laursen, New York, Palgrave (expected 2002).

[10] There is a new, 5.5 column
article on Brescia in Encyclopédie d'Yverdon. Brescia was
home to Arnaud de Brescia, a twelfth-century heretic involved with the
sect known as the Patarines in Italy and the Publicains in France.

[14] See my "From Switzerland to
Europe through Leipzig: The Swiss Book Trade and the Leipziger Messe 1770-1780"
in Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, 4, 1994, pp. 103-133,
for a discussion of the marketing and sales history of the Yverdon encyclopedia
based upon the Leipzig book fair catalogues and the archives of the Société
Typographique de Neuchâtel.

[18] Both encyclopedias discuss
the Waldensiens in their articles "Albigeois," and to estalish a geneology
whereby the two groups become one and the same at some point, even though
the two groups were quite different. Because of the tendency to conflate
them in these encyclopedia articles, we will consider opinions pronounced
about them as being the same.

[19] See Harold O. J. Brown, Heresies:
The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostles
to the Present, New York, 1984, pp. 261-262: "From Luther onward,
Protestants have been quick to recognize and claim their affinity with
many that Rome brands heretical, particularly with the Italian Waldensians
and the Bohemian Hussites."

[20] See Brown cit., p.313: "Early
Protestants, unlike some of the radicals, were not willing to suppose
that God ad completely forsaken the church or left himself altogether
without witnesses. They saw a continuity between the early chuch and their
own day in the isolated but recurrent witness of some of the mystics and
some of the groups Catholicism condemned as heretical: the Waldensians
and the Hussites, both of which groups quickly rallied to the Reformation
when it began".

[21] Berenger, or Berengar of
Tours challenged Scholastic authority in the eleventh century in the Eucharist
controversy over whether the Eucharist was literally flesh and blood,
which did not seem reasonable, or whether this eating, which imparts to
us the benefits of the Eucharist, is accomplished through belief in the
word of God. Berenger's position called upon man's reason, understanding,
and faith in the matter of the Eucharist. Berenger was condemned for his
belief and forced to sign a confession and a declaration of his belief
in transubstantiation in 1059. "Berengar's eucharistic theory shocked
his contemporaries not only because it challenged what had become a major
element of Christian piety, the corporeal presence of Christ in the communion,
but also because he arrived at it in what seemed an arrogantly rationalistic
manner", (Brown cit., pp.244-245). Jérome de Prague's classification
as a heretic also revolved around the doctrine of transubstantiation,
which Jerome had learned about in Oxford, where he had studied with Wyclif,
who advocated the supreme authority of the bible. John Hus learned of
Wyclif's teachings through Jérome de Prague and made them his own.
Michel Servet or Michael Servetus was put to death by his opponent Jean
Calvin over issues of church control: "The unhappy conflict with Servetus
and Calvin's ruthless way of dealing with him cast a heavy shadow over
Reformed Protestantism, one that has not been totally removed even to
the present day. (Brown cit., p.114) This echos the position of Elie Bertrand
over the controversy in the article "Jean Calvin" Encyclopédie
d'Yverdon.